Silicon Valley greats side with Samsung over Apple dispute

Samsung is getting help from a few really powerful friends in its battle against Apple, but knowing that this is after all a legal battle, we will yet see how much good additional “firepower” can do.

According to a document unveiled by Inside Sources, Google, Facebook, eBay, Dell, HP and other big tech corporations have submitted a "friend of the court" brief on July 1, supporting Samsung's stance.

Samsung has been locked in legal battle against Apple for years now. Apple has filed a lawsuit against the Korean tech giants for violating numerous patents, including tap-to-zoom, two finger zooming and edge-to-edge glass design.

The court had ordered Samsung to pay Apple almost $1 billion (£640m), but later lowered that amount to $548 million (£351m). Samsung is still battling to try and completely reverse the court’s decision.

The companies that filed the “friend of the court” briefing believe Samsung should not turn over its entire profits over patent infringements that weren’t that important for the device to be popular and earn money to begin with.

Inside Sources quoted this relevant part of the document to illustrate what the companies mean:

Under the panel's reasoning, the manufacturer of a smart television containing a component that infringed any single design patent could be required to pay in damages its total profit on the entire television, no matter how insignificant the design of the infringing feature was to the manufacturer's profit or to consumer demand.